Katharine Cooper

In her characteristic black and white photographs, Katharine Cooper (b. 1978, South Africa) depicts women, men, and children with a great form of respect and sensitivity. She is drawn to the slightly strange side of humans — the things that make people stand out from others, but in the most subtle and often very modest manner. Essential in her work is the attempt to get close with her subjects, to break down the boundaries between the people and herself, as though she is part of their immediate family. For her, a portrait is as much a representation of the maker as it is of the ostensible subject.

Since 2013 Flatland Gallery has been representing Cooper, the same year she was awarded the photography price from the Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris. In 2015 Flatland published a book of her series ‘White Africans’, titled White Africans, A Journey to the Homeland, that includes a text written by Phillip Prodger, Head of Photographs Collection at the National Portrait Gallery in London. A selection of her work from the Middle East has now been selected for the exhibition ‘Chrétiens d’Orient’ at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris from 26 septembre 2017 till 14 janvier 2018. Cooper's work is in important collections such as L’Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France, FIMALAC collection (F. Marc de Ladreit de Lacharrière), France, Djurhuus Collection, Copenhagen, Denmark, Hugo and Carla Brown Collection, The Netherlands.